The Christian faith holds the key to understanding the world.

Men’s minds are obviously such that when they lose true opinions they have to take up false ones, and then a fog arises from these false ideas, which obscures that true vision.

  - Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of a man.

  - Ecclesiastes 12:13

Boethius’ visitor, Dame Philosophy, was concerned to answer the questions troubling his mind. She comforted her imprisoned subject by reminding him that nothing happens to us by chance: “But I thank the author of all health that you have not yet wholly lost your true nature. The best kindler of your health we have is your true opinion of the governance of the world, that you believe it to be subject not to the randomness of chance events but to divine reason…” Indeed, Boethius did, and it was this confidence in God’s sovereignty and His goodness which enabled him to face his ensuing martyrdom with peace.

In his history of the twentieth century, Modern Times, Paul Johnson asks why it was so easy for perfectly rational people, at the turn of the last century, to be duped into believing the lie of Marxism, Freudianism, and purely naturalistic evolutionism. He answers that, having given up belief in God, they could not simply not believe. They had to believe in something, and when a person won’t believe in God, he’s ripe to believe in just about anything, no matter how irrational it may actually be.

In our day “the randomness of chance events” has been exalted to the place of de facto deity among the proponents of a materialistic and evolutionary worldview. But this is simply a confession of convenience; secular scientists do not really believe in chance. They believe in a reliable method, reliable protocols and norms, reliable findings, and a universe which is, if not completely knowable, at least knowable to a certain extent, and truly.

But the denial of God and of any place for God in the work of science has made plenty of room for “a fog of false ideas” to enter into the work of the scientific community. The effect of these false ideas is to deny the teaching of Scripture on what we as Christians would argue are among the most important truths anyone can hold, such as, the fact that human beings are made in the image of God, that God in Christ is reconciling the world unto Himself, and that the only way to gain true knowledge and wisdom is by beginning with the fear of God.

Science cannot function without order, predictability, and uniformity. Chance – unknowable, unpredictable, and uncontrollable (not to mention all powerful) – factors into the thinking of naturalistic scientists merely as a convenience, replacing the sovereignty of God with the sovereignty of something we feel confident we can actually control.

Belief in mere chance is not workable. Nor does it promote the pursuit of wisdom and the confidence that human life – and all its enterprises, including science – is of anything more than fleeting value, if at all.

Christians working in the sciences profess to believe in the sovereignty of God; but does this conviction actually affect our outlook and work? Does it give us confidence in our methods? Humility in our findings? Wisdom to serve our fellow human beings for the praise and glory of that sovereign God?

Or is this also merely a confession of convenience?